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2020. kth - 23. jjk - 18.
Taehyung is boring holes into his packed suitcase, he doesn't even remember when he finished it, how his closet is suddenly empty, or how he had laid out his boarding pass and passport on his desk.
Apart from those things, his room looked exactly how it had when he first arrived. Like it belonged to 18-year-old Taehyung who was excitedly getting ready to leave for college.
It seems like a lifetime ago now. He's going to be returning to his life abroad, leaving this part of him behind.
Leaving Jeongguk behind.
He has managed to stop himself from looking out the window over to the house next door, knowing that he would only drown himself in a million questions and what-ifs. Meanwhile, the only person who resided in that house was some hollow shell that had the same name as someone whom Taehyung once knew.
It all felt wrong. Leaving him. Giving up on him.
Over the past few weeks, Taehyung had been so confident, so hopeful that Jeongguk was getting better, that there was a chance that he could get back on his feet and become the person he always wanted to be.
It just seems like a pitiful dream now, an escape from reality.
Taehyung can't forget that Jeongguk would go so far as to threaten people's lives in exchange for money. He had scared Seokjin half to death, and completely traumatised him.
How can Taehyung look past something like that? Why does his heart so desperately want to believe that Jeongguk is a good person, when he so clearly wasn't acting like one?
Taehyung struggled with loss for such a long time. He had witnessed how excited his family was for their second child, how they had celebrated when they discovered Taehyung's mother was pregnant, how they let Taehyung help paint the walls pink in the nursery when they found out the baby was a girl, and how they smiled in complete bliss when they held her for the first time.
He witnessed how they cried and fell apart when they realised their precious baby wasn't breathing anymore.
He watched as his mother blamed herself for leaving the room, for thinking that being gone for two minutes wouldn't have any consequences.
But Taehyung knew whose fault it really was. He was lying on the couch, playing with some stupid toy in his hands, with his sister snuggled up against him. He only became aware that she had slipped away and fallen off the couch when he heard the sound of her little body coming in contact with the floor.
Something inside him stopped him from looking over at her, he continued lying on his back and staring at the ceiling. He was terrified.
